A virtual or a dedicated server is a standalone machine, which has its own Os and maintaining the latter up-to-date is an important, although underestimated task. Not only can an update improve the overall performance of your websites, but it could also save you a great deal of troubles down the road. An update may be released for a lot of reasons, the most widespread being to fix newly found security holes, which may permit third-party people to access and alter the content you have on the hosting server. You may also see an improved efficiency of your web programs as updates can also be released for better compatibility between the Os and the configuration it works on so that you can get the most out of the hardware. In addition, if you keep your applications up-to-date, they might also need a later Operating system version that will have the needed software dependencies and will enable them to work properly.